Project Manager, Delivery Manager, Product Manager, Product Owner – who is who?

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Imagine, or not, that you have a company. You have a great idea for a new product. You are counting dollars, thinking about those yachts, TED Talks, friendships with other brilliant entrepreneurs. But there is one problem. Who will be responsible for “making the product”. Who will deliver, who will create vision, who will execute this vision and who will be responsible for everything that will be in the future? You start to search for someone suitable. And this is the point in which Shao Khan will roar “It has begun!”. Mostly because you have different options. What kind of options?

Who is who?

When you are looking for someone who will be responsible for your future or existing product, or maybe you want to go choose product path, you will see that companies offer jobs for:

  • Delivery Managers,
  • Project Managers,
  • Product Managers,
  • and Product Owners.

You may think that this is all the same. But it’s not the truth. So what’s the difference between those four positions?

Let’s start with the Delivery Manager. This position is as needed as the others. Mostly because Delivery Manager in the organization is responsible mostly for two things, when and what will be delivered in the product development process. Deciding how each team member can use their time best, most productively. Thinking about time they are thinking about maximizing value that can be delivered in your product. To do that effectively each delivery manager should also think about:

  • Scope – to put it simply, to think about how and when the development team delivers the solution which is most appropriate and proportional to resolving a problem.
  • Quality – you don’t want to compromise the quality of the product, release a half-baked solution. Quality is key and needs to be closely monitored and controlled.
  • Barriers – time is crucial, so the delivery manager is responsible for removing barriers that can slow down the development team.

To put it in one sentence. Delivery Managers are agile project managers who ensure that the piece of work is delivered to time and budget with full transparency of dependencies, risks and priorities. They will collaborate closely with you and are a real driving force to delivering the solution. I’m mentioning project managers because they are like delivery managers but with a twist.

Trust the process

That twist is called a process. Mostly because Project Manager is more like Delivery Manager, but we can point out two major differences. First, they are more focused on ensuring that the project follows all needed organizational procedures and controls. Second, is scale and pace. Delivery Managers in many cases are destined to work fast, deliver on short term projects. When Project Manager is a more long term solution. We can add to this also monitoring of dependencies, preparing documentation. This role understands cost, time, and knows how to plan delivery, but in many cases we don’t think with an agile work style (although this does not mean that it cannot work agilely), more like someone who can be compared to a construction manager.

His focus on processes and the fact that he or she can coordinate many projects simultaneously is making this position very desirable in organizations, but also very demanding for the one who holds it. To put it in one sentence:

Delivery Manager it’s like a special force for fast, point direct attacks, when Project Manager is destined for long-term siege of the project.

Product Manager or Product Owner?

Ok. But what about those two? Product Managers (PM) and Product Owners (PO). Where is the real difference? During my career so far, I have encountered that the names of the two positions were used interchangeably. The thing is, the PM is not the PO and the difference is not just due to the name.

First thing that we need to point out is that Product Managers, as a position in a company, existed many years before Product Owner came to the stage. One of the first companies who implemented PMs to their structures was Hewlett Packard back in the 1940s. Most Silicon Valley companies have had Product Managers from the start. As a Product Manager your roles and responsibilities will change depending on your context and the stage of your product. That means that PM might be doing more strategy and validation work with problem discovery in a product that has not been defined yet without even working closely with the development team. You can lead strategy for a larger part of the product and coaching your teams to discover and execute well.

On the other hand Product Owner is like Product Manager but when you are deciding to have POs in your organization it means that:

  • You want to work in agile environment,
  • You want and you are ready to bestow more responsibility for the product evolution to the Product Owner,
  • You assume that the PO will work with his, preferably self-sufficient, development team. That means also that there will be the team backlog and day-to-day activities described in Scrum framework (Planing, Refinement, Daily, Retro).

The above three principles appear not coincidentally, as the concept of Product Owner as a role was introduced with the advent of scrum. Hence, the previous paragraphs can be encapsulated in one sentence:

Product Owner is a role you play on a Scrum team. Product Manager is the job.

If you want to work in an agile framework there is a big chance that you will have Product Owners. All Product Owners are Product Managers. On the occasion of the agile transformation some companies fall into the trap of using Product Owners as supervisors for Product Managers. They assume that this is a completely different role. It’s not. In fact, in either case, we are talking about the people who should be building the product vision and working closely with the technical teams. You need at least one of those roles.

Source: Roger Snyder “Product Owner vs. Product Manager Exploration”, Source: https://280group.com/product-management-blog/product-owner-vs-product-manager-exploration/

Who you gonna call?

Ok, but who do you need? To be fair and square with you, it all depends. Each role can address different areas more and other less. To put in to perspective:

AreaDelivery ManagerProject ManagerProduct ManagerProduct Owner
StrategyXX
VisionXX
Backlog ownership (with refinement)X
Business Case CreationXX
ForecastingX
ScopeXXXX
PlanningXXXX
QualityXXXX
Time orientedXXX
Working closely with devsXX
Agile frameworksXX

Each of the above it’s a role. It’s not like that you need to choose one or two and that’s it. One person can (in theory) perform in different roles. For example Product Owner can sometimes be Delivery Manager, because you’re running a smaller project which doesn’t require a full-time person to play that role because there is no point in hiring someone particularly for that role. You can change roles, create new ones. You can be agile and have delivery managers, product owners and so on. You can be a small company and you don’t have the resources for all of those roles. In the end it all depends on your need in time. You will change your structure many times, and try different things. All depends on your need in time, possible scope, resources, and the stage of development of your organization. Choose wisely.

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